Google+ Hangouts

Google+ is the search giant’s latest foray into the world of social networking. And it’s already doing a lot better than their other attempts to enter the territory currently dominated by Facebook and Twitter.

One of the core features of Google+, and the reason Facebook fought hard for Skype integration itself, is Hangouts. This is group video chat with up to 10 people able to share a video chat together about anything and everything. Or more likely, nothing whatsoever.

Google+ Hangouts has had some YouTube integration from the beginning, but it has just been improved a great deal.

YouTube Video Integration

Now, as well as being able to launch videos within a chat and launch a live stream within a chat too, YouTube videos on the site are labeled with a Google+ Hangout button. This appears under the Share option, alongside Facebook, Twitter, Embed, and Email.

This may not seem like much but it could get people using Google+ in a big way. And many social networks suffer from a lack of maintained interest, with boredom quickly setting in if new features and activities aren’t provided on a regular basis. This could help prevent that from happening on Google+.

The big question for me is if social video viewing is something most people want to do?

Conclusions

I watch a lot of YouTube videos, partly for work, partly for entertainment. I also share the best one with friends and family occasionally. But do I want to sit and watch them with a group of people in a video chat, most of whom I barely know? The answer is a categorical no. I could, however, be in the minority.

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BBC iPlayer

The BBC introduced the iPlayer, its magnificent television-on-demand catch-up service, more than three years ago now, and it has grown both in stature and usability massively in that time. Thanks to regular updates it is now intuitive and easy-to-use, yet offers a lot of features.

As well as being available on computers, the iPlayer can be accessed on a wide range of devices, including connected-TV platforms and mobile devices such as the iPad. The latter now has an international version, and the former has been given a plentiful upgrade.

iPlayer for TV Upgrade

The iPlayer for TV upgrade makes sense as soon as you lay eyes on it. Similar in look and feel to YouTube Leanback, the new iPlayer for TV is built with the living room front and center rather than being a messy compromise.

The Playstation 3 games console has been given the upgrade first, with the 300 or so other connected-TV devices to follow in the coming months. As I use the PS3 to watch BBC shows I’ve missed anyway I was able to update and install the new software today and give it a test drive.

This is about as simple an interface as I’ve ever seen for a television app. But that’s a good thing as it feels very much like traditional TV. The difference being that the range of content on offer is astounding and yet astoundingly simple to access.

Everything is divided into categories and channels; there are lists of your favorite shows and options to search for potential new favorites; and every menu is one click away. You can even find a new show while watching another.

My only criticism for the PS3 was that it’s impossible to switch iPlayer off. Not because of addictiveness, but literally because the only way to return to the main menu was to shut the system down and start again. Which really isn’t ideal.

Conclusions

The new version of iPlayer for TV is magnificent. Yes, the BBC uses our money (at least those of us who are license fee-payers) to fund the whole thing, but I really can’t resent that fact when it delivers such a fine application as this.

[Via The Next Web]

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Inventive YouTube Videos

There have been lots of inventive YouTube videos over the past few years, most of which have been posted on our sister site WebTVHub. These include Annoying Orange, and virals from Old Spice and Tippex.

And now we have a new game to suck all our time away from us: a YouTube version on the classic Tic Tac Toe. Unfortunately, what is the simplest game when played with pen and paper is a little trickier to recreate on a video site.

Interactive Tic Tac Toe

YouTube Tic Tac Toe has been created by video producer Rutter Jared. Great name, great game. It uses the annotation feature on YouTube to astounding effect, with 131 separate videos and more than 1,000 annotations required to cover every possible move and combination of moves in the game.

Jared told GigaOM that YouTube Tic Tac Toe required him to put in a month’s worth of 14-hour days, with the video editing and annotations being laborious work. And I doubt I’d have had the patience to see it through, if I’m honest.

The one aspect I don’t like is that it’s virtually impossible to win because we, as the player, always goes second, and everyone must know by now that Tic Tac Toe is usually won by the player who goes first. Which is Jared. Still, it’s fun losing in such an innovative environment.

Conclusions

As well as being fun for those of us who play the game, it’s a job for Jared as he has been making a living producing videos for YouTube since November 2010. YouTube has been trying to entice people to become full-time video creators of late, and it’s clearly working.

VYou

I’ll be honest, I’d never heard of VYou until recently, but when a startup manages to raise $3 million in Series A funding it’s a sign that you really should check out the site. And I’m very glad I did because there is a lot of promise there.

In essence VYou is a social networking platform which revolves around video. Once you create an account you can build an online persona through posting videos and respond to those posted by others.

You can also follow the various celebrities and brands which have already seen fit to take advantage of the opportunities VYou affords them. This includes the likes of Deepak Chopra, Moby, The Daily Beast, and Simon and Schuster.

Funding/Future

As revealed by TechCrunch, VYou has acquired Series A funding to the tune of $3 million from RRE Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, High Peaks Ventures, Broadway Video Ventures, Kevin Wall, David Tisch, and Rick Webb.

Company founder Steve Spurgat stated that the money will be spent on hiring a lot of new engineers on the tech side and to improve the product with some key features. Both of which are essential if VYou is going to transcend from its current position on the sidelines and become a serious player.

The signs are good that it will achieve this, as it’s operating in a niche which has the potential to grow into a phenomenon. Social networking is a huge part of the Web now, and the online video sector needs to take advantage while the iron is hot.

Conclusions

VYou looks to be worthy of its initial investment, and I have no doubts there will be more to come. What is also inevitable is that the site will now see competition popping up all over the place as others try to muscle in. As long as the best rises to the top that isn’t a bad thing.

Google TV

Google TV has been with us for almost a year now, but its first incarnation was never going to the best or final version. As is Google’s way, the company releases a product and then beavers away improving it with subsequent releases.

This is exactly the treatment Google TV has been rewarded with. There were strong rumors that the improvements would be displayed in brief at Google I/O this week, and that has indeed turned out to be the case.

Although it’s far from being a complete unveiling, it is at least something. And the screenshots are kinda hot, in a very geeky way.

Google TV Update

Google unveiled the new user interface for Google TV at Google I/O on Wednesday (May 11). NewTeeVee nabbed some screenshots which certainly show the UI has been vastly improved over the past year.

Simplicity is key, with Google having sought to remove all the extraneous steps unnecessary features to make the user experience a lot better. Simply put, the installed apps are available to select along the bottom of the screen while the current video continues to play above.

The new UI, which is being released on Android 3.1 (Honeycomb), also features an improved search capability and the Android Market. This will bring a huge selection of apps to Google TV and make it a much more appealing purchase than it currently is.

Conclusions

I’m impressed by these changes, and there are clearly more to come. The question is whether they will be enough to persuade the online video-viewing public to buy into the product. Because so far they haven’t in any great number.

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YouTube Videos

YouTube currently gets more than 35 hours of video uploaded to the site every minute of every day. Which is more than I can possibly conceive of. You’d think that would be enough to sate Google’s desire to remain as the number one online video destination, but apparently not.

Keen to help out those people who haven’t got access to any kind of camera – whether it be a Webcam, video camera, or smartphone – and those who don’t feel comfortable showing their faces on the Web, YouTube has teamed with three third-party apps.

These apps – collectively known as YouTube Create – all allow you to create a video for free with nothing other than the tools provided.

Camera Not Required

The three apps now integrated into YouTube are GoAnimate, which offers all the elements required to make simple animations, Xtranormal, which turns your script into a CG animation, and Stupeflix Video Maker, which turns your digital content into a unique video.

I took a look at all three options and eventually plumped to create a video using GoAnimate. The simple yet effective result of which can be seen embedded below:-

I know it’s not very good, but the fact it only took me around 10 minutes to create (having played around with the tools for around an hour beforehand) is surely impressive, even if I say so myself. And I chose just one setting and the most basic of set-ups. Suffice to say there is a lot more that can be done.

Even the talking didn’t require any external hardware or software on my part, as a clever text-to-voice tool doing all the work. You can also upload audio clips and/or speak into a microphone to give your characters voices.

The other two apps are demonstrated in this YouTube Blog post from December 2010.

Conclusions

The great thing is how these apps bring everyone the opportunity to create a video for YouTube, as long as they have access to the Web and a YouTube account. And I’ve got a feeling this is just the tip of the iceberg, with a lot more promised for the future.

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Video Advertising

Video advertising takes many forms. From video ads embedded (often annoyingly autoplay) on sites across the Web, to viral ad campaigns such as the ones for Old Spice and Tippex, video advertising is both varied and increasingly popular.

It makes sense for sites which display online video to use video advertising. Hulu does this extremely well, but YouTube has somewhat struggled thanks to concerns over the type and legality of content on the site.

However, YouTube is confident its new approach is a good one.

TrueView on YouTube

TrueView, as the new YouTube video ad units are called, give YouTube viewers three different ads to choose from. If none appeal, they can instead choose to skip the ad altogether, and the advertiser won’t be charged.

Short-form videos will have in-stream adverts, while long-form videos will have either pre-roll ads or ad breaks spaced throughout. The ad breaks may not be skippable.

This is no doubt inspired by Hulu’s Ad Selector which already allows viewers to choose their own ad. This is currently an option on around 10 percent of all Hulu videos.

Conclusions

The idea of allowing people to choose or skip ads is, at first, a bizarre one. But it actually makes a lot of sense. If someone chooses a particular advert then you can be pretty sure they’re interested in the product being advertised.

And if they choose to skip the ads altogether? Then they were unlikely to be swayed by them in the first place, and the advertiser actually saves money trying to sell something to an uninterested party.

[Via AdAge]

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Google TV Arrives…

The first Google TV products are on sale this weekend in the U.S., with Sony’s impressive yet expensive range of Google TV sets, and the Logitech Revue Google TV set-top box now being available to buy.

There’s no guarantee consumers are going to go for Google TV at this early stage of proceedings, but that isn’t stopping Google forging ahead with its plans to really push itself and its online video properties into the living room.

YouTube Leanback

It’s no coincidence that YouTube Leanback has been launched just ahead of the arrival of Google TV. And it’s had some work done to it in the three months since it made its beta debut in July.

YouTube Leanback is a user interface designed to make viewing YouTube videos feel much more TV-like. And though it works on the Web as a whole, it’s been designed for televisions and living room devices which connect to the Internet.

Since the above video was first aired, YouTube has made a number of improvements to Leanback.

All YouTube videos should now be viewable, but those more suited to the Leanback experience are promoted front and center. All will play in high quality and all will now come with the same pre-roll and overlay ads they would have on the regular YouTube.

Conclusions

YouTube Leanback is designed to turn YouTube into a TV channel to be viewed from 10-feet. And it handles this task with ease. While it’ll surely be improved upon as time progresses, it’s certainly ready for its Google TV debut.

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The Language Of The Web

Like it or not, English is the language of the Web.

There are, obviously, other languages present, with sites in probably every other language of the world. There are also translation options for those sites not available in your mother tongue. But overall these are sidelined somewhat by English

It’s obvious why English became the standard language of the Web, with the U.K., U.S., and Australia all being big users of the Internet. But nations who have given the world other widely-used languages are keen to change this.

One is using YouTube to try and affect this change.

Don Quixote On YouTube

The Royal Spanish Academy, the official guardians of the Spanish language, has invited people from all over the world to read Miguel de Cervantes’ 1605 novel Don Quixote de la Mancha.

The classic novel contains 126 chapters and is almost 1,000 pages long, so has been divided into over 2,000 small segments to be read out in Spanish on videos that will then be posted to YouTube.

Secretary of the academy, Dario Villanueva, said:

“The Spanish language does not occupy the space that it deserves on the Internet. We want to denounce that and do something to correct it.”

Spanish speakers keen to get involved can volunteer their services via a YouTube channel set up specially for the occasion.

Conclusions

This is far from the first time YouTube has been crowdsourced, with YouTube itself recently doing so for both the YouTube Play project and the Life In A Day movie. But this is the first time it’s been done in exactly this way.

Will it be successful? I fully expect the Royal Spanish Academy to fulfill its ambition to have Don Quixote read out in Spanish on video. But its aims to get Spanish used more extensively on the Web? I doubt it very much.

[Via BBC News]

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Viral Video Advertising

Companies are becoming increasingly keen on using video technology and the viral nature of the Web to sell their products.

Viral video has the power to spread across the Internet at a rate of knots, with embeds and linking via social networking sites disseminating the message to all corners of the Web.

Some firms have taken a subtle approach, hiding the brand or product away somewhere. Others, meanwhile, have taken the more direct approach, putting the company name or product center stage.

From Old Spice To Tippex

Old Spice is the most recent, and possibly most famous of these campaigns. Over the course of several days in July, a team of producers worked with the Old Spice Guy Isaiah Mustafa to create videos on the fly in response to tweets and updates, mainly by celebrities.

Now Tippex has launched its new video campaign on YouTube. The ingenious ads begin with a video titled ‘NSFW. A hunter shoots a bear!’, which then offers viewers a choice of whether to shoot the bear or not.

Whichever option is chosen, the viewer is taken to a new YouTube page. The hunter Tippexes out “shoots” and invites you to fill in the space. Depending on what word is added, a video is played showing that course of action.

While not all the possible inputs are covered, many are. Which means there are dozens of videos which can be watched, all of which subtly advertise Tippex.

Conclusions

The Tippex campaign hasn’t yet gained as much attention as the Old Spice one, but both show that viral video is a strong weapon in a company or brand’s advertising arsenal in this day and age when we live a substantial part of our lives online.